Tag Archives: Baby

I recently bought a new baby carrier as the stretchy wrap isn’t much good for a weak mummy and a big chubby baby combo. This coincided with her starting to chew on everything so it was definitely important to make some suck pads.

I had asked for extra material for my custom made Sleepy Nico so I could make some. I used this tutorial but I added a layer of pul too. I also got aome kam snap pliers so i could add poppers instead of velcro. Apparently an eight or nine year old should be able to use these so it figures that with my weak hands I needed help from the man about the house!

I am now looking for more things to add poppers to, so when we almost lost the teether chick to the streets I made a couple of toy save clips.

Then I made a few more for other mums at the local baby group! I used these instructions because I wanted to make sure they were safe to use.

Another go with a Sew Sweet Patterns pattern! This one is the Harper dress. Again I found it easy to print out (though I did have to learn about layers in acrobat) but then I had a few problems. The pattern states that the 6-12 month size fits on half a yard of fabric, following some shopping at an American retailer on Etsy I had some half yards rather than half metres, and it doesn’t!

It only works if the back is cut out length ways on the fabric, which I did in the end but does cause slight pattern direction problems, and probably other ones I don’t even understand.

Anyway, it was easy to sew up and soon it was time to learn a new skill – buttonholes! I struggled to buy buttons, I can’t quite believe the local fabric shop had a whole wall of buttons and they were all nasty plasticky crap. I got some in a charity shop in the end. After taking advice from my mother in law, and a couple of trial runs on scrap fabric, I was ready to take the plunge. I am no longer scared of buttonholes!

I am so pleased with this dress I already have plans and fabric for a couple more. She’s going to look so cute in it!

There’s just one slight problem. .. Mindful of all the mums at baby groups who tell me she’s huge I tried it on her. It fits now at four months! And the armholes are a little tight. I see some hacks coming on.

The blanket is still continuing, and the baby is still in, so there’s going to be time to finish that before the new year I think. I’ve also been back at the sewing machine to make some things I needed for the baby. I am planning to use cloth nappies as I was so horrified to find out how long disposables take to biodegrade, so when we are out and about I will need somewhere to stash the dirty ones until I can chuck them in the wash.

I bought some waterproofed fabric, known as PUL, from Plush Addict which is also anti fungal and anti bacterial. I used this as the inner for a wet bag, and used the cool fox fabric I got from Fabric Rehab the other week as the outer (I can’t find the fabric on their website, they did say they thought it would sell out really fast and in fact it seems to be unavailable in the UK now, but it’s from this collection) – just because it’s going to hold dirty nappies doesn’t mean it can’t look cool. I didn’t really use a pattern, I’ve made zipped pouches before so just did the same things this time, but larger. If anyone wants instructions these and these could be useful.

One of the benefits of this PUL fabric is that is has a fabric feel on one side, not plasticky, and is also washable to 60C. I needed a travel changing mat for out and about and decided to use the polyester knit side so it will be less cold for the baby to lie on. This time I ironed some vilene fleece onto the fox fabric first so that there was a bit of padding too. Again I didn’t really have a pattern, I took some inspiration from here and here but pretty much made it up as I went along. Still rubbish at mitred corners, but I doubt the baby will notice!

I’m hoping that tomorrow we will be making the ultimate Christmas make in the kitchen – a Gingerbread house! So I’ll try and put some pictures up, this will be a joint effort with Mr Han who has made a very impressive one before.

It’s been a while. Since the last post I’ve been doggedly knitting a blanket (still not done), made some bunting which it turns out doesn’t “go” in the baby’s room since Mr Han redecorated, finished work after training my maternity cover lady, and had 2 horrible colds. Actually I still have one of the colds so this project was finished in between forays to the tissue box.

The theme for the baby’s room is “woodland” (of course it is), despite the internet describing this as a boy only theme I think it’ll be nice if it’s a girl too. Girls can play in the woods too sexists! I decided to make a cloud mobile for a bit of ceiling staring and used the templates from an old issue of Mollie Makes. This mobile is actually from the Liberty book Simple Sewing.

A couple of weekends ago my favourite local fabric shop Fabric Rehab was open on a Saturday, yay! I was at a loose end as Mr Han had gone to watch Lincoln City (I know, super exciting) so I took a trip over there. I wanted to buy everything but managed to restrict myself to mobile fabrics – and an amazing fox print, watch this space. Luckily the lovely ladies helped me choose as I am horrendous at coordinating stuff. This is the best shop, friendly staff, amazing choices and such good prices (even postage is cheap fabric addicts…).

Sewing the clouds was easy, if a bit stop start on the machine as I’m not great with so many curves. Today I finally attached all the pieces and added the raindrop beads. That was a total fiddly pain in the butt! I was using metallic embroidery thread which probably didn’t help, but it took hours! Still the result is pretty sweet, and it will look even better hanging from the ceiling. It’ll have to be well out of baby’s reach though!